The infamous conservative activist Christopher F. Rufo wrote a feature for the Manhattan Institute last month slamming a Tenderloin halfway home for formerly incarcerated people as a “frat house for pedophiles.”
Dozens of registered sex offenders live in the building located at 111 Taylor St. It is 400 feet from a daycare, on the same street from one of the neighborhood’s largest family housing complexes and less than a quarter-mile from a children’s park.
Rufo said neighbors voiced their frustration over the presence of sex offenders — and in many cases, pedophiles — living nearby.
He posted a video on Sept. 30 with the faces of more than a dozen residents of 111 Taylor and wrote, “EXCLUSIVE: California is dumping convicted pedophiles into residential neighborhoods in San Francisco.”
District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood retweeted Rufo’s video that same day, and called the allegations “extremely concerning.”
“It is concerning that these individuals are nearby, in a neighborhood of 3,500 children,” Mahmood, who represents the Tenderloin, said later in an interview. The supervisor said he looked into the claims made in Rufo’s article, while describing his rhetoric as Islamophobic, transphobic and “reprehensible.“
But California law says the residents are allowed to be there.
“Due to state law, there’s not much at this time that we can do,” Mahmood said.
Megan’s Law is the federal law that requires sex offenders leaving prison to register their address on an online database. Jessica’s Law, passed by voters in 2006, is the state counterpart.
Initially, the state law banned registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of any school or park where children congregate. That ban was largely overturned in 2015 by the California Supreme Court, which said the ban could only be applied on a case-by-case basis, as it restricted options for sex offenders post-incarceration and exacerbated homelessness.
The Tenderloin halfway house, Geo Re-Entry Services, is the only private housing facility for formerly incarcerated people in the neighborhood, and can house up to 240 people. It is run by GEO Group, a for-profit prison corporation contracted by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the federal Bureau of Prisons.
The controversial prison operator has been the focus of protests over its contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, conditions inside its detention centers and allegations of abuse in its halfway houses.
Mahmood and other community advocates have pushed back against the building: Last year, he and other supervisors launched an investigation into GEO Group’s halfway house, at 111 Taylor, hoping to shut it down. That attempt failed.
Of the 32 sex offenders now living at 111 Taylor, all but one committed or attempted to commit a sex crime against a minor, according to the Megan’s Law website.
Leaders with the Turk x Taylor advocacy group, who are still actively advocating for GEO Group to leave San Francisco, say that people who are convicted of sex offenses and who have served time have a right to live in San Francisco and access rehabilitation.
“This argument, how Rufo is talking about it, has an unfortunate focus on blaming people who have already done their time,” said Chandra Laborde, a Turk x Taylor leader. “Our main focus is to highlight how people are being mistreated by GEO Group.”
Mahmood said he is still discussing with city leaders whether to hold another hearing on the GEO Group halfway house— but as no city money funds it, the city can do very little. “Nothing in this building is in our control,” Mahmood said.
Mahmood said he remains concerned, but unless other laws are broken, the presence of sex offenders there is legal.
“We 100% need a halfway house in San Francisco,” he said. “I just don’t think the Tenderloin is necessarily the place for it, and GEO Group is definitely not the right operator.”
